It will be remembered[2] that in February, 1666, the French commander, Courcelles, on his bold midwinter expedition against the Mohawks, strayed from his route, and found himself near Corlaer or Schenectady, where he learnt that the English had become masters of New York, and that there was an English garrison at Albany. This was the first intrusion of the French into the Hudson valley. Tracy's expedition against the Mohawk towns later in the same year gave Colonel Nicolls, the first English Governor of New York, occasion to invite the New England colonies to join him in attacking the French. They refused, fearing that, if they sided with the Iroquois, they would be exposed to attack from the Abenakis, who were on their borders, and who were friends of the French, foes of the Five Nations. Some twenty years then passed without open rupture. New York was retaken by the Dutch and regained by the English. The colonization of Canada went on. The Iroquois remained comparatively quiet, and in Frontenac's first term of administration western exploration and western trade began to determine French policy in Canada and English policy in New York. [Footnote 2: See above, p. 104.] [Sidenote: _Thomas Dongan._] [Sidenote: _Meeting between the English Governors and the chiefs of the Five Nations._] [Sidenote: _Bad feeling between French and English._] In 1683, after Frontenac had come to Canada for the first time and gone again, New York was given in the Irish Catholic, Thomas Dongan, a Governor of strength and foresight. In the following year, at a conference held at Albany, at which Lord Howard of Effingham, the Governor of Virginia, was present, the alliance between the English and the Five Nations was formally confirmed; and, assured of English aid and protection, the Iroquois turned their strength against Canada. Though there was peace between Great Britain and France in James II's time, the relations between New York and Canada were the reverse of friendly. The French knew that the Five Nations were backed by the English. Dongan on his part was resolved that the {128} trade of the West should not be left exclusively in French hands. Angry letters passed between him and Denonville, English and Dutch traders on the lakes were intercepted by the Canadians, and a party from Montreal captured and looted three English trading posts on Hudson Bay. In 1688 Dongan was recalled, and in the following year news reached the American colonies of the Revolution in England. [Sidenote: _French plan for attacking New York._] [Sidenote: _Frontenac's raiding parties._]